USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > One hundred years of Mount Vernon Church, 1842-1942 > Part 3
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He received the honorary degree of D.D. from Chicago Theological Seminary in 1926, and from Oberlin College in 1932. He is an honorary member of Rotary, and president of the Oberlin Missionary Home As- sociation.
Dr. Richards is the author of several periodical articles, a volume of sermons, The Sufficiency of Jesus, and a series of devotional studies, Windows in Matthew.
In 1907, he married Miss Hazel Temple Read of New York City. They have three children: Elizabeth Putnam Richards (Mrs. Chalmer J. Roy), Laura Ellen Richards, and James Austin Richards, Jr.
Dr. Richards sent the following letter of greeting from Oberlin, Ohio, on April 29, 1941:
Our years with Mount Vernon Church are a most treasured memory both with Mrs. Richards and with me. Indeed, they still live with us. The noble men and women with whom they called us to labor, the lessons they taught, the en- during friendships they gave, are priceless. Again and again in distant places we meet some who were in Mount Vernon while we were there, and what fun we have talking of the past and of the present!
The life of every church is a race with time. The new generation must be prepared to lead before the old generation completes its service. Some of the old guard are still in the van but it is thrilling to read in the roster of today's officers the names of some whom we saw come in as boys and girls. It is equally thrilling to meet in other places some of our young peoples' group who now are leaders in other churches. Two of the gifted professors in the Oberlin Graduate School of Theology, Walter M. Horton and Clarence T. Craig, I first met when working in Mount Vernon Church. And the memory of the joy we found in the young people of Mount Vernon was a large factor in bringing us to our present pastorate. So Mount Vernon still lives with us.
21 See Appendix F for an appreciation of Dr. Richards.
14 ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF MOUNT VERNON CHURCH
In fact, our pride in it still grows. We belive that it is now better adjusted to its unique task than at any time since we have known it. We, therefore, look to its future with enthusiasm. "The best is yet to be." We should be at a loss to name any church opportunity where minister and people fit each other more perfectly.
It is, therefore, in no perfunctory way but with deepest personal gratitude for the past and the keenest expectations for the future that we send you and your noble pastor our affectionate greetings.
JAMES AUSTIN RICHARDS
THE REVEREND A. SIDNEY LOVETT, 1919-1932
The Reverend A. Sidney Lovett was born in Boston on January 30, 1890, the son of Augustus and'Elizabeth (Russell) Lovett. He was grad- uated from the Browne and Nichols School in Cambridge in 1908, from Yale University in 1913, and from Union Theological Seminary in 1917. In 1932 he received the M.A. degree from Yale University, and in 1937 the D.D. degree from Dartmouth College.
He was the assistant in the American Parish, New York City, from 1914 to 1917. Before coming to Mount Vernon Church22 in 1919, he had been minister of the Maverick Church in East Boston for two years. For thirteen years he was the beloved minister of Mount Vernon Church, from September, 1919, to June, 1932, when he became the Chaplain of Yale University. In the year, 1928-1929, he studied in Oxford, England, and the Reverend Harold G. Jones,23 now the minister of the Plymouth Congregational Church in New Haven, served as acting minister. After Dr. Lovett's resignation in 1932 and until the appointment of the Rever- end Carl Heath Kopf in 1933, the Reverend Edwin E. Aiken, Jr.24 now minister of the Bethany Christian Congregational Church in Lynn, served as acting minister.
Dr. Lovett, with profound spiritual sincerity, scholarly attainments, and great love for mankind, guided Mount Vernon Church with skill and devotion. Those in trouble will always cherish, with deep gratitude, his sympathetic understanding.
His first wife, Rebekah Bartlett Mills, of Brookline, whom he married in 1915, died in 1916. In 1922 he married Esther Parker, of Winchester, whose ability, sound judgment, and devotion to church work will always be remembered. The Lovetts, "Uncle Sid" and "Aunt Esther" as they
22 He was ordained at Mount Vernon Church on February 3, 1920. Several ministers supplied the pulpit from 1918 to 1919, during which period Deacon Albert Murdoch served as "pastoral secretary."
23 See Appendix H for his letter of greeting.
24 See Appendix H for his letter of greeting.
15
THE MINISTERS
are affectionately called, have three children, Eugenia, Richard, and Sid- ney.
The following letter of greeting from Dr. Lovett,25 sent from New Haven on November 25, 1941, is a veritable benediction:
These lines of Coventry Patmore's, "In Divinity and Love, what's best worth saying can't be said," haunt me, in undertaking to compose a word of greeting to Mount Vernon Church on the occasion of its one hundredth birthday. Words are vehicles far too frail and limited to convey all that the mind knows and the heart feels.
As a school boy travelling daily from Brookline to Cambridge, I used to seek shelter from the elements in the doorway of Mount Vernon Church, for the corner where the Church stands was then the point of transfer from one surface car to another. Little did I dream that one day this Church and parish would be my own particular charge. As an undergraduate at Yale, I was deeply moved by the occasional sermons of Dr. Albert Parker Fitch, who came each year to New Haven as one of the University preachers. Several times during vacation periods I forsook my home church in Brookline to hear Dr. Fitch in his own setting. By no stretch of the imagination could I have then envisaged myself come to occupy the pulpit which he so eminently adorned. When in 1919 it was my privilege to succeed Jim Richards, and to inherit his labors which had given to Mount Vernon Church its unique sense of mission to students and young busi- ness and professional people, I was come home to a community and to a church to which, in some indefinable way, I already belonged.
I have always been thankful for the proximity of Mount Vernon Church and the river Charles. To look out upon the Basin from the Social Hall or Herrick House, whether by day or night, is a healing process. The noise and confusion of the traffic on Beacon Street are stilled in the broad expanse of water that bounds the north side of the Church. Walking along the Embankment, I believe I have drowned more worries and conjured up more fresh insights into the real meaning of life than any man now enjoying that fair prospect. I know what the Psalmist meant when he sang of "a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God." The Charles and the Church will always be to me the outward promise of this inward condition of divine enjoyment and strength.
Time and space, let alone words, are not sufficient to tell of the many friend- ships and associations that are an indissoluble part of my life, as a precious leg- acy received of a thirteen-year pastorate at Mount Vernon Church. There will be absent from the Centennial some whom the Church would delight to honor in person for their long devotion to its highest welfare. I think, in this connection, of Mrs. Helen M. Craig, the Misses Alice and Marion Hawes, Uncle Albert and Aunt Emma Murdoch, Aunt Serena Perry, Mr. Charles H. Flood, Mr. John D. Graham, Mr. John G. Hosmer, Dr. George H. Washburn, Mr. Alfred A. Gillette, and Mr. and Mrs. Chen Fong. Together with others who might be mentioned they were to me, during my ministry, a veritable society of encourag-
25 See Appendix G for an appreciation of Dr. Lovett.
16
ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF MOUNT VERNON CHURCH
ers. From the vantage ground of the larger life to which they have come, I know they must behold in the Centennial the fruits of their labor, the rewards of their faith, and are well pleased.
No minister of Mount Vernon Church was more blessed than myself in col- leagues who served the Church with me in an official capacity. Jack Wiley, Harold Jones, Bob Bullard, Ev Baker, Burns Chalmers, William R. Bennett, and Ned Aiken were comrades who make the heart still glow in their remem- brance with a sense of undiminished affection. Miss Mary A. Ballou, Mrs. Florence Glazier, Miss Mary G. Perry, and Miss Margaret Conant in Herrick House, Kenneth Shaw Usher presiding at the organ and directing the choir, Cap Page and Cap Hallsted firing the boilers and tidying the sanctuary, are gracious and vivid members of a Christian fellowship in which I was honored to serve.
Even the famous church cats, "Sailor" and "Blackie," come to mind as they used to come to call. I feel sure they are catching celestial mice, in keeping with their earthly prowess.
What Dorothy Hickie has done for the continued welfare of Mount Vernon Church, from the moment she came into its service even until now, would re- quire a separate volume merely to recite, let alone to praise.
Looking back over the past decade, nothing in the on-going life of the Church has given me more satisfaction than the leadership of its present min- ister, Carl Heath Kopf. He has entered into the labors of all who preceded him with enthusiasm and imagination. In his own right, he has brought to the work and worship of Mount Vernon Church new and persuasive gifts of speech and the allure of a radiant spirit. Under his ministry the Church has gone from strength to strength and become today, more than ever before, a commanding influence in the community and city. There is no satisfaction greater than to look back at the Church of one's own love, and see its reach widened and its mission increased through the ministrations of one's immediate successor. To God be the glory, but I hope Carl and Mary Kopf and their children, even unto the third and fourth generation, will be just where they are now for the bicen- tennial.
SIDNEY LOVETT
THE REVEREND CARL HEATH KOPF, 1933-
The Reverend Carl Heath Kopf, the present minister, was born in Buffalo, New York, on August 6, 1902. His father was George P. Kopf of Buffalo, and his mother was Viola B. Heath of Canada. Both were "ardent Baptists." After graduation from high school, Mr. Kopf re- ceived a scholarship to enter Princeton University, from which he was graduated in 1925.
At college his main interests were "waiting on table to earn board, running any distance from a mile up, debating, studying jurisprudence
0
Sidney L
Care Weath Topp
17
THE MINISTERS
with the intention of becoming a lawyer and eventually mayor of Buffalo, and tutoring summers." Dr. Conklin in biology was the teacher who helped him gain a "new respect for the compatibility of science and re- ligion." Mr. Kopf's senior thesis was The Decisions of the World Court and the League of Nations, in both of which he still believes. "I was graduated with no particular honors," he says. He was elected to the Senior Council and made captain of the cross country team.
The year after his graduation, he was the preceptor of Dr. Harris E. Kirk's course on the historical backgrounds of Christianity. One verse in the faculty song in June, 1926, was:
Here's to Dr. Harris Kirk,
Who gives first groups for fifth group work. But now that Kopf is chambermaid, We doubt if we shall make the grade.
His interests turned from law to religion largely through a year's work counseling students as a secretary of the Princeton Y.M.C.A. He took a few courses at Princeton Theological Seminary. Then in the fall of 1926, he became assistant minister of the Eliot Church in Roxbury, Massachu- setts. "I had never been in a Congregational Church before," he adds, "but two hard years calling up and down the back streets of Roxbury, learning to teach religion, and trying to help all kinds of people, proved two things to me: I loved the ministry and I loved the Congregational Church with its insistence on making a man do his own thinking."
In 1928 he married Mary Fitz Randolph Chalfant, a Methodist min- ister's daughter, whom he had met at a Princeton conference. Behind the scenes of the church today is one inspirational force, Mary Kopf, to whom the church owes much of its activity and vision. No one, least of all the minister, would want her name omitted when appreciation and praise of this ministry is acknowledged. Mr. and Mrs. Kopf have three children, David Heath, John Randolph, and Anne Elisabeth.
Before coming to Mount Vernon Church in 1933, he had been the minister of the Crombie Street Church26 in Salem, Massachusetts, for five years, during which time he finished his study of theology at the Boston University School of Theology.
Coming back from a summer vacation in Europe in 1938, Mr. Kopf wondered what could be done "to reach the vast numbers of people who had lost interest in religion." The result of this determination was a series of Sunday radio talks over station WEEI, From a Window on Beacon Street. This series is now in its fourth year.
His first full length book, Windows on Life, was published by the
26 He was ordained at the Crombie Street Church in 1928.
18
ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF MOUNT VERNON CHURCH
Macmillan Company in the fall of 1941. The book has already gone into a second edition. These informal essays have helped many people to re- gain a cheerful perspective.
Perhaps you have already noted the striking parallel between Edward Norris Kirk, the first minister, and Carl Heath Kopf, the present minis- ter, serving just one hundred years later. The former was born on August 14, 1802, and the latter on August 6, 1902, just eight days short of one hundred years. Both names are four letter words beginning with K. Both men went to Princeton and both studied law before changing to the min- istry.
There is another striking coincidence which makes a fitting conclusion to the chapter on the ministry at Mount Vernon Church. The names Kopf and Kirk in their original usages mean respectively "Head" and "Church." Together the names complete the great "Head of the Church," to the service of Whom both have devoted their lives.27
27 For an appreciation of the Reverend Carl H. Kopf, see Chapter XIII-Mount Vernon Church Today.
3
Church Buildings and Herrick House
Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it. -PSALMS, CXXVII, I
M OUNT VERNON CHURCH held its first public religious exer- cise in the Old South Chapel in Spring Lane. From June 19, 1842, until December 31, 1843, public worship was held in the Lecture Room of the Masonic Temple, at the corner of Tremont Street and Temple Place. The clerk of the Prudential Committee, George F. Homer, recorded on June 7, 1842:
Some conversation was had upon the expediency of holding public worship: but, it appearing that this subject had been referred by the Church to the Ex- amining Committee, no formal action was taken thereon. Upon motion, Voted, that Bros. Crockett & Stone be a Sub-Committee, to procure a place of worship, and to make all necessary arrangements and contracts in relation thereto.
On June 22, 1842, after "conversation and remarks upon the occupa- tion of the Lecture Rooms engaged by this Church," the Prudential Com- mittee elected Brother James W. Kimball "to prepare and cause to be lithographed a Plan of the seats in the Temple, with a valuation thereon -rent and taxes-amounting in the whole to about $4000. and also cause the seats to be numbered." At the same meeting an invitation was presented from the Central Society, "offering to this church the use of their upper vestry for Friday evenings." A week later, the Committee voted to reduce the valuation to $3750. Seats at the Masonic Temple were "offered for rent"' on Monday, July 11, 1842. On November 30, 1842, the Committee voted that "the Chairman be authorized to make arrangements to continue the lease of the Temple for one year, with the privilege of giving it up . . . upon sixty days notice."
CHURCH ON ASHBURTON PLACE
The first meeting with reference to the erection of a house of worship was held on January 3, 1843, following a public notice "from the pulpit on the preceding Sabbath." It was determined "after deliberation and prayer," that the time had arrived when "we were called, in the provi- dence of God, to go forward and erect another sanctuary for His wor- ship." A subscription was commenced and the following were elected a
19
20
ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF MOUNT VERNON CHURCH
building committee: George W. Crockett, chairman, William W. Stone, Daniel Safford, John Slade, Jr., Roland Cutler, Freeman L. Cushman, and George F. Homer.
"After many ineffectual attempts to obtain a situation combining the requisite advantages," the committee in May contracted for an estate1 just over the crest of Beacon Hill, on the north side of Somerset Court (now Ashburton Place), a site "unequalled perhaps by any in the city for the purpose, considering its quiet location, and its advantages for ventilation and light." The site was "elevated, quiet, and surrounded by a dense and intelligent population." The street was then residential, with stately private houses owned by old Beacon Hill families.
The corner-stone was laid on July 4, 1843, on which occasion "an ap- propriate address was delivered by the pastor, and the Reverend Lyman Beecher led in prayer." On January 4, 1844, the house was "solemnly dedicated to the worship of Almighty God." Dr. Kirk was assisted in the services by "the Rev. Messrs. Adams, Winslow, Rogers, Aiken, Blagden and Jenks."
In the light of present building costs the following items will be of interest. From the Journal of Mary E. Beck and Lucy M. Beck we learn that the cost of the building was $56,000. Among some of the expenses recorded in the Records of the Treasurer are the following: Richard Bond, the architect, received $500 for his "architectural services rendered in building Meeting House"; Greenleaf, Cushing and Adams, the ma- sons, $10,319.27; Willard Sears and Company, the carpenters, $7892.12; Octavius T. Rogers and Company, $4511 for the granite; P. and T. Kel- ley, the plasterers, $1025.75; John Bates, the painter, $952.48; and Daniel Safford and Company,2 $375 for blacksmith work, iron work, and hinges. Other items of expense ranged from $3300, paid to Thomas Appleton for the organ, down to $1.25, paid to Nathaniel Waterman for a "Bronzed Spitoon."
This Ashburton Place Church, which is still standing and is the present home of the Boston University Law School, was a gray granite building with a Grecian façade. Its interior of mahogany and white paint was "plainly elegant" and had "an air of quiet repose with nothing gaudy or out of taste to offend the eye." The dismal chapel in the basement was used for social gatherings, meetings, and prayer meetings. The dimen- sions of the building were seventy-five by ninety-seven feet, containing a lower floor and a gallery. The basement story contained, besides the
1 The land deeds are recorded in the Registry of Deeds at the Suffolk Courthouse. See records for Oct. 21, Nov. 1, Dec. 11, and Dec. 15 for year 1843, and Feb. 12, 1844.
2 Daniel Safford and Company built the iron fence around Boston Common.
21
CHURCH BUILDINGS AND HERRICK HOUSE
several committee rooms, a chapel sixty-eight feet long by forty-eight feet wide.
Miss Alice M. Hawes writes in her Glimpses of the Old Mount Vernon Church:
The church had the largest seating capacity of all the Boston churches. Deep galleries ran around it on three sides, with the organ loft at the back. It was severely plain, but the pulpit was stately and beautiful. There was no center aisle. Dr. Kirk is said to have planned it so, in order that no one might boast of a pew in the broad aisle while a poorer brother had one in a side aisle. The floor was slightly raised from front to back and the side pews were gently curved, so that every pew should be good for sight and hearing, and yet the room did not suggest a theatre. In the early days the pews had doors, and when the family were all in, the father might close the door if he wished, so keeping the children in, and the strangers out. Not a very hospitable arrangement, and in Dr. Her- rick's time the doors were taken off. Below was what was called the vestry, though Dr. Kirk preferred the name chapel, an immense, square room which could not by any stretch of the imagination be called cheerful or beautiful, but which served its purpose well, as a Sunday School room, and a place for social gatherings. Then, smaller rooms in a row: number one, where the church com- mittee held solemn conclaves; number two, given over to the young people for their use ; and number three, which provided rather inadequately for the kitchen and serving arrangements.
Another vivid picture of the old church has been recorded by Miss Margaret F. Herrick, in her unpublished Reminiscences of Mount Ver- non Church Before 1880.
I remember the auditorium as a spacious, high-studded, airy, light room; its high windows paned in a light greenish translucent, but not transparent, glass, bordered with a narrow strip of bright colors in a geometric design. The walls were a very light putty color, panelled with a border in a darker shade and a Greek honeysuckle design, very pretty and in keeping with the classic style. There were two main aisles edging a double row of pews in the middle, and leading up to a high and stately pulpit of rosewood and a chancel behind with churchly sofa and chairs cushioned in red velvet. The crimson-carpeted steps which led up to it were flanked on the outside by big rosewood cubes about a yard square, on which potted plants were set for gala occasions. The Commun- ion table stood just below the pulpit. Our pew was near the front on the right- hand side of the right-hand aisle, and was at an obtuse angle to the middle pews, so that by slightly turning my head I could see much of what went on in the rest of the Church. There were two other aisles just under the side galleries ; and at the back of the Church (above my dear friend the clock) were the organ loft and choir.
The last Sunday service in the church on Ashburton Place was held on
22 ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF MOUNT VERNON CHURCH
the morning of November 6, 1892. On Thursday, November 10, the funeral service for Deacon Andrew Cushing was held in the old church, thus fitly closing the religious history of that building.
PRESENT CHURCH BUILDING ON THE CORNER OF BEACON STREET AND MASSACHUSETTS AVENUE
The first reference in the Records of the Prudential Committee con- cerning the contemplated new church on the corner of Beacon Street and Massachusetts Avenue is on June 7, 1888, when a special meeting was called to consider a report from the committee of the church concerning "the advisability of disposing of our present house of worship and with the proceeds to secure a lot of land upon the Back-Bay and to build there- on a small Chapel with the intention at some future time of erecting a larger House of Worship, and thus preserve the life and future useful- ness of this Church and Society." The Prudential Committee expressed "their hearty sympathy and general approval" and voted to call a meeting of the Pew Proprietors of the Society to consider the subject.
To remove from the neighborhood was considered a "matter of ex- pediency," because of rapidly changing conditions on Beacon Hill. With- in less than twenty years, one hundred sixty-five families had removed from that section "immediately contiguous to the church." Dr. Herrick recorded:
I doubt whether any church ever came much nearer to extinction and then recovered than did the dear Mount Vernon Church. We had stayed upon the hill too long, and were rapidly becoming anaemic. Scores upon scores of our own families had died out and moved away. The people to whom a church of our order appeals were no longer there. The district was more than abundantly churched for its population. The old parish lines were being filled by Hebrews, Europeans of various nationalities, and negroes, all of whom had other prefer- ences and abundant other provision for their religious wants. The Roman Catholic Church was taking care of a rapidly increasing constituency. Our re- moval would be a deprivation only to the few Congregational families, which were rapidly decreasing.
On June 25, 1888, the following building committee3 was chosen by the pew proprietors of the society: Henry Woods, chairman, William G. Means, Joseph D. Leland, Richard R. Higgins, and Thomas Y. Crowell, representing the society; and George H. Bradford and Henry A. Mellen, representing the church. The Reverend Samuel E. Herrick and the Rev- erend Morton Dexter were later added to the committee.
3 On July 12, 1888, Mr. Henry Woods was elected chairman and Mr. Thomas Y. Crowell, secretary and treasurer.
23
CHURCH BUILDINGS AND HERRICK HOUSE
No definite action was taken until April 29, 1890, when "Messrs. Woods, Bradford & Crowell were appointed a committee to examine the various sites and localities on the Back Bay, and suggest to the Building Committee what would be in their judgment a suitable location." After considering "somewhat favorably" several locations, including the lot at the corner of West Chester Park4 and Marlborough Street, the lot at the corner of West Chester Park, Huntington Avenue, and Falmouth Streets, and the lot on Huntington Avenue next to the Children's Hospital, the committee finally decided on the present location, on the "water side of Beacon Street at the corner of W. Chester Park on the North side of the Entrance to Cambridge Bridge, containing 15000 sq. feet (& subject to a strip being taken off the front 20 feet wide on Beacon St. belonging to the Boston Water Power Co.)"
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